Our journey down the rabbit hole into the wonderful world of the arts...

Saturday, 18 March 2017

Cozy Classics - An Audience with the Authors

A while ago we wrote about a beautiful and original introduction to the classics, the BabyLit series by Jennifer Adams and Alison Oliver. These have been real favourites amongst many people we know, and Mr Darcy and Lizzie Bennett from the Pride and Prejudice playset regularly race each other round the room in the interests of creative persuasion for Culturebaby to practice her violin. We also wrote about re-creating the Georgians in this post about dressing up our dolls in easy-to-make Regency attire. This was one of the most effective and memorable activities Culturebaby and friends have enjoyed. The girls also love visiting the costume collections in the V&A Museum and the Museum of London and spotting the dresses they see in our books.

Fans of both these projects will be delighted to hear that whilst perusing the internet I fell across another utterly adorable and completely unique set of books designed to introduce the youngest reader to the great classics, this time through the idea of simple word association with particular scenes. The absolute joy of these gorgeous titles, collectively called Cozy Classics, which ooze character and creativity on the part of their creators, is that they contain photographs of scenes painstakingly created from felt dolls set up in natural environments. These exquisite characters seem to truly capture the essence of the titles that they represent. Also, a huge bonus, they follow the stories in order through a series of scenes, and whilst the titles do not provide the narrative, they do allow a parent who knows the tales to re-tell them simply and effectively. They are absolutely stunning additions to the girls' library, and whilst they are board books, both girls enjoy them. We will treasure this set beyond childhood.

We were very interested in the inspiration and creative process for these brilliant little books, so we posed a few questions to the authors. We hope you enjoy this unique insight into the creation of Cozy Classics from Holman and Jack Wang.

How did you come up with the idea of using handmade characters to illustrate a classic?

HOLMAN:
When Jack came up with the idea for Cozy Classics years ago, I loved
it. However, neither of us were trained illustrators (I’m a lawyer and
Jack’s a creative writing professor). We didn’t think that anything we
might draw or paint would stand out in the marketplace, so we had to
think outside the box. I came up with the idea of needle-felting wool
figures and photographing them to create our images—not that I had ever
needle-felted before! So I jumped onto YouTube, watched a few videos,
and taught myself the technique. Then I created some initial test
images, which we thought were fresh and could give us a signature style.
We’ve been felting ever since.

Why did you decide to focus on classic books for the very young?

JACK:
The idea for Cozy Classics arose out of my experiences reading word
primers to one of my daughters when she was very young. Early word books
all seemed to be organized around concepts—shapes, numbers, colours,
barnyard animals. All very important, of course, but not the most
engaging reading for parents. I wondered to myself why word primers
couldn’t be organized around narrative. I thought that creating extreme
abridgments of well-loved stories would inject interest, irony and
humour into the word primer genre, and I think we’ve done that. And if
parents present one of our word primers to their children with just that
little extra bit of enthusiasm, then we will have done our tiny part in
helping parents model an engaged and affectionate relationship with
books.

How do you decide on which story to do next? What would you like to cover in the future?

J:
We decide our next titles based on an ever-shifting logic. Our first
two titles, Pride and Prejudice and Moby Dick, just seemed like
quintessential classics—one “girl friendly” and one “boy friendly.” Then
we wanted to push our abridgements to the extreme by taking on massive
tomes like War and Peace and Les Misérables, which also expanded the
series into Russian and French literature. After taking on some moodier
classics such as Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, we
wanted to balance the series with lighter fare, so more recent titles
include The Nutcracker and The Wizard of Oz. So there’s always a
rationale, but it’s never the same. As for what we’d like to take on in
the future, there are a few titles that are not quite in the public
domain, like The Great Gatsby, that are on our list.

What sources do you use as inspiration for the costumes you create?

H:
Costuming is always an interesting challenge because we obviously want
our characters to evoke the proper sense of time and place for each
book. At the same time, we want to bring our own design elements to a
character. So we watch movie adaptations of the classics and research
images of period clothing to draw inspiration. Then we try to design
costumes that are fresh, but still resonate with popular imagination. What do you do with the little figures when you've finished working with them? Do they live as a little collection together?

H:
Most of the felt figures live in my garage studio in Vancouver, Canada
after they’ve “retired.” Luckily, however, the figures do get out for
fresh air sometimes! I take figures with me when I do school visits, and
we’ve had museum exhibitions which have required us to fly figures
around the continent. For example, our figures have been exhibited at
The Strong, National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, as well as
The Original Art Exhibition put on by the Society of Illustrators in New
York City.

What feedback have you had on the approach
taken - using single words on each page? Do you find parents fill in
their favourite stories using the scenes? Why did you go with this
particular way of exploring the stories?

J: We’ve
received a lot of appreciative feedback from parents who relish the
opportunity to share their favorite stories and characters with children
at the earliest stages of learning. Parents definitely use our books as
storytelling vehicles. And as we like to say, there’s no “wrong” way to
read Cozy Classics. Even if parents don’t know the original classics,
they can always make up the story, or ask their child to. The only
important thing is that parents and children bond over books, and the
earlier the better!

Do you see a future series for
slightly older children with simple versions of the stories themselves
using the gorgeous photos in the originals?

H: We
actually had this debate with our original publisher before the series
was launched. They worried that word primer versions of the classics
wouldn’t work, and actually encouraged us to pair each of our images
with a couple of simple sentences. We resisted this idea. It diluted our
“high concept,” discouraged parents from storytelling in an open-ended
way, and opened us up to criticisms that the simple prose lacked the
beauty or music of the original texts—criticisms that haven’t been
directed towards our word primer versions. After Cozy Classics hit store
shelves and met with early success, our publisher told us that Jack and
I were right to stick to our guns. So, no, we don’t see a future series
for slightly older children at this time. But it’s a great question!

You can watch a wonderful behind the scenes video here, narrated by the authors showing the creative process and how the scenes were made:

We are hugely grateful to the publishers of Cozy Classics, the fantastic Chronicle Books, who sent us copies of the series to review and to the talented Jack and Holman Wang who took the time to answer our questions. We hope you've enjoyed meeting the authors as part of this post.